The Princess Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

three more stitches. Carla Stark was a redhead, very pretty and very eligible and certainly no virgin. She wanted to throw her head back and scream, but that would be juvenile. It was a temporary setback, that was all.
    â€œNothing to say?” her father asked.
    She shrugged. “Nothing to say.”
    He hesitated. “I don’t want to be cruel,” he began. “I know you’ve set your heart on King. But he’s thirty-four, sweetheart. You’re a very young twenty-one. Maturity takes time. And I’ve been just a tad overprotective about you. Maybe I was wrong to be so strict about young men.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t really have mattered,” she replied ruefully. “It was King from the time I was fourteen. I couldn’t even get interested in boys my own age.”
    â€œI see.”
    She put the crochet hook through the ball of yarn and moved it, along with the partially finished afghan, to her work basket. She stood up, pausing long enough to kiss her father’s tanned cheek. “Don’t worry about me. You might not think so, but I’m tough.”
    â€œI don’t want you to wear your heart out on King.”
    She smiled at him. “I won’t!”
    â€œTiff, he’s not a marrying man,” he said flatly. “And modern attitudes or no, if he seduces you, he’s history. He’s not playing fast and loose with you.”
    â€œHe already told me that himself,” she assured him.“He doesn’t have any illusions about me, and he said that he’s not having an affair with me.”
    He was taken aback. “He did?”
    She nodded. “Of course, he also said he didn’t want a wife. But all relationships have these little minor setbacks. And no man really wants to get married, right?”
    His face went dark. “Now listen here, you can’t seduce him, either!”
    â€œI can if I want to,” she replied. “But I won’t, so stop looking like a thundercloud. I want a home of my own and children, not a few months of happiness followed by a diamond bracelet and a bouquet of roses.”
    â€œHave I missed something here?”
    â€œLettie said that’s how King kisses off his women,” she explained. “With a diamond bracelet and a bouquet of roses. Not that any of them last longer than a couple of months,” she added with a rueful smile. “Kind of them, isn’t it, to let him practice on them until he’s ready to marry me?”
    His eyes bulged. “What ever happened to the double standard?”
    â€œI told you, I don’t want anybody else. I couldn’t really expect him to live a life of total abstinence when he didn’t know he was going to marry me one day. I mean, he was looking for the perfect woman all this time, and here I was right under his nose. Now that he’s aware of me, I’m sure there won’t be anybody else. Not even Carla.”
    Harrison cleared his throat. “Now, Tiffany…”
    She grinned. “I hope you want lots of grandchildren. I think kids are just the greatest things in the world!”
    â€œTiffany…”
    â€œI want a nice cup of tea. How about you?”
    â€œOolong?”
    She grimaced. “Green. I ran out of oolong and forgot to ask Mary to put it on the grocery list this week.”
    â€œGreen’s fine, then, I guess.”
    â€œBetter than coffee,” she teased, and made a face. “I won’t be a minute.”
    He watched her dart off to the kitchen, a pretty picture in jeans and a blue T-shirt, with her long hair in a neat ponytail. She didn’t look old enough to date, much less marry.
    She was starry-eyed, thinking of a home and children and hardly considering the reality of life with a man like King. He wouldn’t want children straight off the bat, even if she thought she did. She was far too young for instant responsibility. Besides that, King wouldn’t be happy